Podcasts on Apocalypse, Prepping, & Climate

Recommendations for All Your Summer Listening Needs

During the summer of 2019, my husband, son, and I embarked on a road trip across the Pacific Northwest. Our first leg of the trip from Portland to Bend, brought us through the Santiam Pass in Central Oregon’s Cascade Range. A little over a year after that road trip in late August-early September 2020, there would be an incredibly destructive fire in the Santiam Canyon that, in total, burned over 130,000 acres–one of many devastating megafires that, together, burned over a million acres in Oregon that year. 

With that devastation in the future, though, we drove across the canyon seeing evidence of past fires. In one section you’d see the lush evergreens covering the hillside, hiding all of the wildlife and undergrowth below. In the next section, the landscape beyond would be bare–the forest floor covered in green would be fully in view amidst denuded trees with the occasional lush evergreen dotting the landscape. What made these post-fire landscapes even more surreal for us was that playing on our car radio was the REI podcast called Wildfire that is centered around another fire from a couple years before, The Eagle Creek Fire. The podcast gave such sweeping context and insights into what fire management could and should be moving forward in the state of climate change. And while we’re listening to that, we’re observing and seeing a post-wildfire landscape. It felt a bit meta. And I loved it.

Here’s a little vid from that roadtrip with the podcast in the background:

It’s that road trip experience that inspired me to pull together some of the podcasts I’ve been listening to that maybe you can take with you on your summer road trips. These podcasts are all climate-related in some way and/or preparedness-related. Some are serialized like Wildfire and many are episodic. All of them are awesome in their own unique ways.

Wildfire by REI

The story in Wildfire focuses on the Eagle Creek Fire that, in 2017, burned around 50,000 acres in the majestic Columbia River Gorge, around 30 miles from Portland. It’s a fire I remember very, very well as my son was just a few months old, a few weeks out of cleft lip surgery. And in the middle of the post-surgery sleeplessness with a baby we were thrown into a smoky, apocalyptic haze for a few days while one of my favorite places on earth burned nearby. So the podcast feels very personal in some ways. By using this very specific place as context, Wildfire provides greater context on the history of fire management in the U.S. and integrates important perspectives from Indigenous peoples and others looking at reframing fire management in the U.S., particularly as the climate changes. In revisiting the podcast, I also just discovered that they released a new season in 2021 about the Amazon which I’ll promptly be binging. And, if you really want to get deeper into fire, this podcast pairs nicely with the book The Big Burn by Timothy Egan, which is still one of my favorite nonfiction reads.

Live Like the World is Dying with Margaret Killjoy

What I love about Live Like the World is Dying is that it takes a much more expansive view of prepping than what one might think of as “prepping.” You know, the storing of food and materials and, well, weapons to prepare for the event of apocalypse. Rather, host Margaret Killjoy interviews anyone from community organizers to brewers through a social justice, anarchist, prepper lens. Margaret’s curiosity is palpable and it helps expand my own curiosity for this more inclusive approach to prepping. What’s more is that you see how prepping is and should be beyond the individual through the podcast. “The progressive, leftist, anarchist way, the community-minded way, is just a more effective and more ethical strategy,” she told me when I was interviewing her for a story I was writing. “Everything I’m learning is reinforcing that.” So go ahead and listen to her podcast because I think you’ll get the sense of that from her interviews.

The Repair by Scene on Radio

For social justice-y types, Scene on Radio is the kind of show that constantly makes the racial and social justice unlearning/relearning parts of the brain fire on all cylinders. And it’s done in such a beautiful and fun and rigorous way. Each season of this Peabody award-winning podcast is dedicated to a critical deep dive into issues such as whiteness and maleness and democracy and is hosted by John Biewan and a guest host who is an expert in that specific topic area. So as a climate justice person, I was thrilled when Scene on’s Season 5 was dedicated to climate change. It is called The Repair and is co-hosted with Amy Westervelt, an award-winning climate journalist is a sweeping investigative series on climate justice that centers the voices of the people most impacted by the climate apocalypse. Once you finish The Repair, you can binge the other four seasons and wait with anticipation for season 6 to come out.

How to Survive the End of the World by adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown

You might know activist adrienne maree brown from her works such as Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism and her scholarship around Octavia Butler and the power of science fiction in activism. What you might not know is that she has a sister, Autumn Brown, who is an activist, author, and theologian. Together, the sisters have the fantastic How to Survive the End of the World podcast which “delves into the practices we need as a community, to move through endings and come out whole on the other side, whatever that might be,” as described by Allied Media Projects. They also describe it as “learning from the apocalypse with grace, rigor and curiosity.” It is a joyful and optimistic take on living through an apocalypse through a social and racial justice lens. You may want to check out their 2020 Apocalypse Survival Miniseries they released in those early COVID days.

Field Trip by Washington Post

I’m only one episode in, but already I can tell you that Field Trip, hosted by Lillian Cunningham, is everything I want from a podcast about the National Parks. Throughout this five-part series, she visits five U.S. national parks to explore the complicated history of the parks particularly through their means of attempting to erase Indigenous peoples and cultures and the uncertain future of these seemingly wild places in terms of climate change. I love this because so much of the narrative around our National Parks is often devoid of context. It’s all about nature and the “untouched wilderness,” juxtaposed against a whole lot of heavily touristed spots that are built up as such. This narrative misses so much and Cunningham does such a great job overlaying that beauty with context that non-Native folks and settlers alike should know. This, to me, is a must listen for those of you making your way to any national parks this summer or whenever. This series also pairs nicely with Wildfire.

How to Save a Planet by Gimlet Media

One of the notable features of How to Save a Planet is that each episode ends with a solutions component. Whatever the topic, hosts Alex Blumberg and Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson ask their guests to tell the audience what they can do to take action. And those solutions are all found in the show notes. This solutions-focused aspect of the podcast is what keeps me going back to the episodes even though the show was canceled last Fall (RIP How to Save a Planet). While I’m so sad that Spotify essentially killed the podcast, I’m happy that all their two years-worth of episodes still exist to go back to. 

What are you listening to? What else should I add to this list? I’m always searching for new podcast content, so put your suggestions in the comments!